As Election Day nears, some candidates start talking about attendance records. Who’s on offense and who’s on defense varies.

State rep candidate Brian Mannal has been criticizing the attendance of his Democratic primary opponent, Rep. Demetrius Atsalis. The incumbent shot back that his official record stands at 95 percent, and that lapses in attendance in 2009 and 2010 were due to the death of his father and his father-in-law, which in the latter case required travel out of country for services.

On Mannal’s next turn, he cited Beacon Hill Roll Call to say that Atsalis had “one of the top 10 worst voting records between 2009 and 2011” on legislative roll calls when quorum calls are included. Quorum calls are not votes on issues but rather taken to determine the presence of a quorum so business can be conducted.

Meanwhile, state Rep. Randy Hunt, who has a Democratic challenger, Patrick Ellis, in the November election, sent out notice of a perfect voting record. He kindly provided with the release a full list of House voting attendance from the office of the minority leader. The list of Cape Cod legislators has Hunt at 100 percent, Rep. Sarah Peake at 99.47 percent, Rep. Tim Madden at 98.13 percent, Rep. David Vieira at 97.86 percent, Rep. Cleon Turner at 95.72 percent, and Rep. Atsalis at 92.25 percent.

The worst “offender” on the list is Rep. Harold Naughton, Jr. of Clinton, who scored an abysmal 53.21 percent. Before you start clucking, consider this: Naughton, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, was deployed in Afghanistan for eight months starting last October.